Apocalypse Life/Issue 31
Issue 31 - The Odds “Alice?!” He couldn’t believe his eyes. He was face to face with the girl, the girl he was going to sacrifice all of his energy, every ounce of it, to find her. There she was, in front of him, the genuinely astonished look in her face almost the same as his. They both rush toward each other, and embrace tightly, as tightly as they possible could. “Oh my god—” Her nostrils start to sting, and her eyes start to glisten. The heaviness in her chest flares, and eventually gives in to nothingness. Her heart starts beating rapidly. “I—I was just about to look for you—” he mutters, some shaking in his voice. The feeling of her long, silky, brown hair brushing against his ear was something out of this world. The warmth of her breath, her smell, like flowers. His own heart hastens his beat, as a mix of emotions rushes through him. Was she an illusion? Has he truly lost her mind? They lighten their embrace, to face each other. She looks at him, eye-to-eye, their warm breaths blending together. He brushes the hair that hides her eyes with his finger, her deep, enigmatic, mesmerizing eyes, a bright blue and yellow. She could see it in his look that he’s been longing for it. They both lean in and kiss, almost at the same time. He still couldn’t believe if this was real, even if he could feel the soft, sweetness of her lips. He dared not let go, because he might lose it again. So he kissed her, for as long as he possibly could. She didn’t resist. “I thought—” Julius couldn’t choose between talking, and kissing her. “—I thought I lost you—” He stops, just so he can look at her again. Her eyes didn’t seize the flow of tears passing her reddened cheeks. “I—I thought you forgot about me—” She weeps, unable to hold it back no longer. “I thought—” “It’s fine—” He could feel his own emotions affect the bridge of his nose, as he wipes the tears from her eyes. -------- Their tearful reunion has led them to take a break on the stairs of the front porch. Julius sat to her left side, the fingers of his hand interlocking tightly with her’s. He rests his head on her shoulder, while she looked off to the distance. “So… where… where to start…” she mutters. Julius pulls his head up and looks at her. “You-you’re real, right?” he asks. She smirks, leans in, pauses, and gives him a peck on his lips. “Okay,” he replies, savoring it for a moment, then quickly resting his head back. “I saw you guys pass by. Saw the car. Kept watch.” She trails her eyes across the street, as if something was passing by. “So you were here the whole time?” he replies. She nods. “About… two days ago. Or so…” The relaxed look about her slowly dissolves, as there was something coming to mind that she had to ask. “There was another person in the car. The front porch.” Realizing the impending subject, he pulls his head up from her shoulder. “Who was she?” Julius’s own expression starts to look like her’s. “Just… a person. She—she helped me get—” “Did you guys have sex?” she interrupts, her volume slightly raised above his. She slips away her own grip from his hand. Julius adamantly shakes his head. “No. No—i—it wasn’t like that—” “It’s okay. Just—just—” Her lack of emotion was starting to become more fearsome. “Just tell me.” “No! No. We—she’s not even straight—” “You sure?” She shoots him a look, her expression making a turn for the sinister. “Forget it—” She tries to tear away from him as if she wanted to leave, but decides against it halfway. Julius holds his ground. “No, no—look—” He takes out her wallet and scans through it, trying to look for the piece of paper she left. “Y-you had a piece of paper here—a m-map piece. She knew where the town is. Helped me get there. We talked a lot, just... about our past lives—how she—nothing like that—” She looks down and away, her expression mixed with guilt, and anger. “Here.” He hands her the wallet, but she refuses to take it. “I love you. Loved you. Always love you. I won’t ever, ever replace you. Look—look at me—” She glances at him for a few seconds, then finally looks at him. “Did you see how we said goodbye? Y-you said you saw her on the front porch—''not'' even a hug. She—the way we talked—she was more like a friend—” She returns with the same mixed expression, but eventually looks away timidly. “I love you, alright? I love you so much. I got… lost, after I saw you—those—that look—like you were really about to die…” The intensity in his voice was louder, more piercing. “I never c-came into terms with that, so I just buried it, deep down. I just—pretended we broke up—like I thought you intentionally left me. Because I cannot, for the life of me, live with knowing that you’re… dead. Th-that I can’t…” He sighs, “… ha-have you anymore.” She looked down the whole time, her eyes starting to glisten again. She sniffs, and wipes it herself. “I won’t betray you. I can’t. Because I love you.” He maintains his look at her, even if she refuses to return it. He doesn’t know whether it was easy to say all this, because she was here, or if it was hard, because he couldn’t imagine recounting those events again. “Okay…” she mutters, the shaking in her voice evident even if it was a single word. “Okay? That’s—” He couldn’t understand her, at all. Sometimes he hates it when she’s unreadable like this. “Well, wh-what about you? Did you have sex while I was away? Did you cheat on me?” Her saddened, timid look almost vanishes instantly, as it transfers into a more disconcerted expression. “I was… crippled, for nearly a month. Could barely move, do anything. That my… my injuries were more serious than they thought.” Her tone alone made him feel a pang of regret for bringing this up. She raises the level of her voice slightly. “Jen kept a close eye on me. I… didn’t move much, first couple of days. I-it was pretty much just me, her, and any people we can save—” She looks away, off to the distance, disappointment riddled in her expression. “So no—I left myself off-limits, just as much as you.” The mix of emotions in her face all vanishes, upon turning to look at him. “I thought you were selfish at first, for—for leaving me there. B-but I knew you n-needed to get out of there. I tried to show it with just my eyes, but—because I couldn’t shout—and so you did. B-but after that…” She sniffs heavily, her eyes reddening from all of the falling tears. “I thought y-you’d forget. I was—I was always thinking what you were thinking about, when you were away, every moment I can. If y-you’d forget—If you’d—run off with some other—” “I was going to look for—” “I loved you, Julius. Do I—” She pauses with a sigh. “Do I need to prove it?” She pauses, looking at him for approval; all he could do was look at her, some guilt evident in his expression. Before he opens his mouth, she leans in close to his face and gives him an arduous kiss. He could feel the tears on her cheeks make contact with his. The intense feeling she gave off with this kiss made him want more, but he hesitates. “W-wait, wait—” he stammers, pulling away. The candid look in her face, her mouth slightly open, her nose and cheeks blushed red, the miserable, yet enthralling look in her yellow-and-blue eyes, and the hand that held his chest made him regret stopping. He leans in and returns her kiss, seizing the moment, so he can continue what she started. ---- Everything passed by in a blur. All he could recall was Alice pushing herself against him, opening the door, crashing the couch… and the rest was history. He sat, looking at her slip her arms on the sleeves of her shirt right in front of him. She catches his eye, and thinks nothing of it. “You okay?” she asks, her right arm halfway through the other sleeve. “Mhm,” he replies, nodding twice. Everything was starting to become easier to believe. She's proven that she’s tangible; he felt her skin, her warm breath, the stinging look of her eyes. It was something he only felt when she was present. “Are you sure you’re okay?” She stood there, scanning his expression, the blissful, tired look in his eyes. She sighs, scurries to his side, and crashes onto the cushion, squeezing herself in to make room. She rests her head on his shoulder, and wraps her arm on his stomach. Her long, untied chocolate-brown hair brushed against his nose. They smelled like lilacs. “Since when was your hair this long?” He starts brushing the strands he could touch with his left arm, the arm she rested her back against. “I don’t always let it free like this. And it got pretty long. Been feeling it.” Now that they were talking about it, she was becoming more conscious of the on-going frizz since a week ago. There just isn’t a decent brush fit enough for the job. “It’s ugly, isn’t it?” He was leaning against her hair, close to dozing off, because of its softness. “’Course not.” She pulls her head up to his level, looking at him. “First day I saw you and you’re already lying to me?” He smirks at her, then sighs. “No.” She shakes her head, returning his smirk. “Love you,” she mutters, resting her head back on his chest. He kisses her head, her voice as clear as a megaphone in his ears. “Love you too.” -------- “Julius. Hey.” She’s poked him on his chest for about three times now. She lightly slaps his cheek, but it didn’t seem to work either. “Psst. Wake up.” He didn’t snore, but he seemed impassable nonetheless. She slaps him on his cheek one more time. Still nothing. She reverts back to lying down on the sofa, similarly to him, looking at the ceiling. What were the ways to wake up a sleeping Julius…? She turns her head to him, leaning close to the side of his face. She whiffs some air in her mouth, and lightly blows on his ear. His eyes instantly open up, and he lets out a bracing sigh. “How long was I—” He was alarmed. It was the best method. He turns to her, his eyes slowly resuming its dreary state. “You were knocked out. Like…” She assumes an unattractive sleeping expression, with her mouth slightly open. He musters a light smirk. “Anyway…” She turns, looking back at the ceiling. He throws his left hand over her right, which was resting on her stomach. “You remember what I said from… when we first saw each other?” It was somewhat clear in her mind. She doesn’t know if he could still remember it. “That…” His voice was slightly hoarse. He clears his throat. “… that … something about fate.” “Yeah.” She sits up, still slightly dipped into the couch. “That fate’s acting all weird, because the world ended. Like…” She starts patting her stomach lightly with her right hand, shaking his. “… they’re pushing us closer, or something. For a reason.” He’s forgotten all the questions he needed to ask. Why she happens to be in the same house he was hoping to crash a night in. Why she was in this town, not the other one. “How’d… you end up here?” He pulls himself up, slightly above the level of her head. “Of all—all the places in this town. Why this house? I was seriously going to start looking everywhere.” She glances him for a few seconds. “I… needed a new place to stay. This one was in really good condition, and… it was unlocked.” She scans the living room in front of her; the combination of furniture, brown carpet, and wooden walls gave it the welcoming feeling that attracted her. “So, I just went ahead and… took it for myself.” “Yeah…” He looks at the room with her. “How ‘bout you? Why… this place?” He pauses, thinking about it for a moment. “The girl that helped me get here? She gave me a key. It was either this one, or … a cat hoarder’s house.” “Oh.” She knows what she's talking about. “That one. Four-seventeen. Terrible smell.” There was actually more to that house, but it wasn’t worth going into detail. “Were you actually in that building? That… abandoned place? The map piece took us there.” She turns to him, as if it was a kind of bad memory. “Wait… did you guys actually… go inside there…?” Him nodding suddenly gave her a bad feeling in her stomach. “And you—” She starts scanning his head by moving it with her hand, to see if there were any scars, or bruise marks that caused him some unneeded injuries. “—you guys went inside there?” She sits up, a bit of fear developing in her look. “Yeah, we did. Was hoping to find you there.” “You—you could’ve—” She resumes scanning him for more injuries, now resorting to his arms. “You could’ve died!” He responds to all this with a smirk. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I didn’t break anything. Probably just some bruises—” “Where??” she instantly replies, now eyeing his shoulders. “Just—it’s fine—” He pulls her hands down to relax her a bit. “It already happened, okay? And we made it out scot-free. Well, she did gash the back of her arm, but—” She murmurs the word “good” upon hearing it. “—nothing, after that. I just fell holding onto the pipeline, ‘cause I needed to jump out… too many walkers. It’s why I got a few bruises, cuts. But I’m fine.” “I’m so sorry—” she continues, her tone as worried as ever. “It’s okay—it’s fine—” He slowly pulls her toward him, wrapping his arms around her back while she rests on his shoulders. “Just that—you could’ve died—and we might’ve not—you know—” “It’s fine, it’s fine…” He starts caressing her hair. “I’m here, it happened.” “Okay—okay—” she mutters from his chest. They pull away after a few seconds, with her brushing the hair away from her face, her eyes slightly pink from almost dropping tears. “W-why are you so worried, anyway? What happened to that place…?” “It was a bad, bad idea from the start.” Her tone completely changes into a serious one, as she worriedly looks away. “It was… it was me, Jen, a family’s worth of survivors. Probably three, four, I don’t know—” Her stern, almost blank expression made him realize her seriousness. “—when you think you run away from them long enough, you’d think they’ll forget about you, get side-tracked. But no…” She shakes her head. “… not these walkers. They—” She glances him halfway. “We’d lose them for a few days. Was hoping it’d be longer, but… it wasn’t. They just—” She starts gesturing with her hands. “Started to fill the floors. Forced us to… keep going up, run away from them. We thought the elevator’d help, but they just took it from us. Just—squeezed in—I don’t know how they’d stop floors but that elevator was unstable anyway—hoped it’d kill them, but no…” She shakes her head again, slowly this time. “And with walkers, comes more walkers. I—we had to get out of there. Just weren’t enough exits, but we had to. If you saw the big hole against the wall, that’s the one we used—” Julius had no idea what she was talking about, but it sure sounded much better than using the pipeline to descend down. “—but there was too many. And… and that’s…” She sighs. “… that’s when I lost them. Been—I’ve been going on by myself since then. Ran away from that place, looked for a better one to stay on. This area’s the closest to a suburb so I—I went here…” And everything seemed like it was explained to him. That she indeed left that map piece as a sign. But how? How did she know he would find it? And why does she keep mentioning Jen? ---- “It wasn’t a miracle—I know it—but… I guess if—if you think about it, it is, but we knew her. So it wasn’t… or…” They were both back in front of the house, sitting on the staircase of the front porch. The outside was a much better place, mostly because of the fresh air. The sky was a much darker orange hue by this time. “Shortly after you left, shortly after I saw you get pulled away by that crowd of people—I just had a gut feeling I wasn’t going to make it.” She had her left hand placed on her stomach. “All I felt was the… the dry air, blowing through the wounds. I didn’t feel the pain, the blood—just… that, and, nothing else. Like, I knew I was going to die. I wanted to live, but I just—I knew I couldn’t crawl away from this. So I decided to let things go. When I fall, like I was on my knees—” He couldn’t believe he was hearing this. A very agonizing moment in his life. When he thought she was going to die, for sure. “—I told myself that, once I fall down, it’s… the end. It’s over. I’ll just lie there, bleed out, wait for something—''something''—to take me. I don’t know what, who, whatever—just wait.” It was much too difficult, hearing all of this. The recital of her death. But her words were too captivating, and he needed to hear it. “But halfway, or… something, through all that, somebody pulled me up. I can still see it, I can—” Her distant look made it somewhat evident. “It was painful, moving around—like something was tugging my stomach, trying to rip it off. But there I was, bleeding a lot, blood on my hands. I was lying down on something really cold—” She rubs the back of her ears. “Like, cold metal. Felt it in the back of my head, elbows, palms. And I saw her, talking, like…” She looks up, to the sky, as if she was trying to recreate that moment. “She said something about… stopping the bleeding. ‘Get the gauss’, or… something about pulling a… I don’t know. But that’s when I knew. That voice was just really, really familiar, you know.” All he could remember was Jen’s face. It was somewhat hard to make the distinction that she was in the army. “I couldn’t see anything. I was really… woozy, you can say. They were just… blurs, at first. I mean, I could—I could see the bright light, and some blots, but that’s about it. She… she was being helped by another soldier. I … forgot his name. But he did most of the work, I think. Jen’s not a medic, I know...” She pauses, looking distantly, as if the story ends there. He, unable to fathom every detail, was almost lost, speechless. All he got out of it was that she was saved, by Jen. A person who looked after them enough times already. He didn’t think it’d be her. “I wake up, same place. Couldn’t move, at all. I didn’t want a wheelchair because it still hurts. We—me, Jen, the medic, a few other injureds—we were forced to move out. We had some immunity, from the soldiers I mean—because there were two soldiers with us, you know—” He almost forgot about the military suddenly turning on the civilians. “So we… we moved on. The others tore off, probably going to their families or something—we just… talked. Bonded. Sat by my side. She has a family down south, all the way down.” She smiles. “Probably on the way there right now…” She daydreams again, the seriousness on her face vanishing. “We kept moving, probably a week. Didn’t stay in one place. I can move, but I didn’t heal up completely. It… bled a lot, back then. When I moved around too much.” She starts feeling her stomach again, her two fingers on the supposed spot of her scars. “Had to change bandages, had to look for bandages… it was kind of tough. The medic guy just told us to wipe off the blood and replace the wrappings. And, you know—he’s long gone—She-she told me how she’s one of the AWOL soldiers, how she’d never turn on me, people. We had to hide from them… the actual military, for a bit. If she got caught, she’d get shot too.” -------- She goes on to talk about their small relief effort to help anyone they could. She claims that it wasn’t a long journey, but they did make some difference in a few peoples’ lives. They mostly went about surviving as a group, attracting a family for a short period of time. Julius was starting to become more and more up to date. “We’d find this one soldier, called him Gable, or something… said he was on his way back to the town, told him to drop off my, my wallet, and this map piece. Tore it off from a pamphlet I found in the building, by the way.” He remembers the soldier, the one who somehow had her wallet on his hand. “He turned. I… I saw him,” he interrupts. “Who? Gable?” She pauses, looking at him with slightly curved eyebrows. “Oh…” They both pause, mostly not knowing how to react. If he hadn’t dropped the wallet off, maybe he could’ve reached his family. It was much too difficult to gauge. “I found you, though. All those weeks, thinking you’re dead, for sure, while you were actually alive—so he did his job.” Alice, looking down, cracks a smile. “Y-yeah… I guess he… did help us. Reunited us.” She breathes loudly, and shakes her head. “You know, I just—I just had this gut feeling you’d find it. I didn’t know how long I’d wait, and sometimes I thought you wouldn’t—but I always imagined how you’d find it.” It was the best day of his life. “Took—took you a month, maybe longer. But, it… could’ve taken years, or something. The odds of that happening…” What were the odds? It’s been a long day. Rescuing Nina, going on a road trip, getting stuck in a building full of walkers. Ending it on this note, where he was about to go on a life-long search for a probable ghost of a woman. But here she was, the love of his life, sitting by his side. He couldn’t help but place his hand on top of hers. A bad day gone good. She continues to look down, on the cement, on the grass of the front porch. They just couldn’t be greener. ---- Category:Apocalypse Life Category:Apocalypse Life Issues Category:Issues Category:KnowledgeProspector Stories